The Cripple and His Talismans

by Anosh Irani

  The driver curses me. (I am told to fetch my sister so that he can make her swelter and welter like the she-dog she is.) I pick my bag up and approach this large man who reads the palm of the young girl.

  “Let’s go,” says the young girl’s lover. He tugs at her skirt. He does not want her palm to be read.

  “But Suresh,” says the girl. “I want to hear what more this man has to say.”

  “But he’s saying such bad things about us.”

  “What if they are such-mooch? Suresh, give him money.”

  “But …”

  “If you love me, you’ll pay for my fortune.”

  “I am paying a fortune,” says Suresh.

  “You call twenty rupees a fortune?”

  “See, I’m right,” says the giant. “Your match is not good.”

  Suresh unhappily plucks out twenty rupees from his shirt pocket. With irritation, he thrusts them into the girl’s palm. I like the shirt Suresh wears. It is so loud, even car horns will sound like whispers.

  “Here’s the money. Tell me what the stars say about me,” says the young girl.

  “I will,” says the giant. “But I must do something before that.” He looks at me. “Is this some balcony show? What are you looking at?”

  “I also want to know my future,” I say. “After her.”

  He does not say anything. He takes the girl’s money and her hand in his. Her hand looks tiny in comparison, like a doll’s. He rubs his palm onto hers and slips his tongue out and in. He takes his time feeling the young girl. I glance at her face and there is no doubt that Suresh is a lucky man. She has been freshly plucked from a tree. How can she allow him to wear that shirt? It makes a circus tent look like a hospital sheet.

  Suresh grits his teeth together. “Now he’s touching you. I cannot bear it!”

  “How you think so vulgar, Suresh! Like a mavali,” she says.

  “I’m the mavali? I’m the mavali?” shouts Suresh.

  “Your future is good,” says the giant.

  “See?” she tells Suresh. “You were worried.”

  “But only on your own,” he continues.

  “Why?”

  “A possessive lover will deny you your dream,” he says.

  “Enough!” says Suresh. “Let’s leave.”

  “What dream?” asks the girl.

  “Your dream of becoming a heroine.”

  “How you knew?”

  Even I knew. With a face like that, what else could her brain want?

  “See this line?” says the giant. “That is your dream line. It is getting cut again and again by your love line. It means the one you love will cut your dreams.”

  “Suresh,” she says. “Is this true?”

  Suresh is climbing the roofs of the city and is ready to jump off. Suresh is having such bad thoughts about the giant that even a crow will turn white.

  “I cannot believe you are so stupid!” Suresh tells her.

  Suresh has just jumped off the roof and dug himself a deep hole.

  “What did you say?”

  “I did not mean it, darling,” says Suresh.

  “You called me stupid,” she says. “And you have before also made fun of my movie dreams.”

  “I love you. You will be a big star, I promise.”

  Men lie like Tuesdays that say they are Sundays. We do not deserve women.

  “You’re just saying that,” she says. I detect tears.

  “Don’t cry, my jaan,” says Suresh. “I did not mean to …”

  Then he makes a mistake. He holds her.

  Never touch a lover during an argument. You are a serpent to her, not a lovable rabbit. Remember that, you fool.

  “Don’t touch me!” She walks away.

  “But my lotus.” Suresh follows her.

  I am definitely on track. He called her a lotus. This man is my giant.

  The young girl will leave Suresh. She has movie dreams and so she will walk alone. I imagine that along the way her legs will spread like cheap butter, her breasts will come out as often as moons do, sheets will crumple, and the scent of paisa will fill her heart, especially those parts left empty by Suresh.

  “Please read my hand,” I tell the giant.

  “Cross your legs and sit down,” he says.

  I sit on the footpath. Ants circle a packet of half-eaten sweet bhel on the ground. I place my brown bag next to it.

  “First, I need a hit,” he says.

  “Hit?”

  From behind his back, he removes a whiskey bottle. It is empty. Without looking, he puts it to his lips. When nothing enters his mouth, he pulls the bottle away.

  “It’s empty,” he says. “Totally useless.”

  He throws the bottle at me.

  Once again I am forced to catch a whiskey bottle in my right hand. Once again the sleeping bird from my past will awaken, trudge up a black tree, and yell.

  It is English class.

  I sit next to Viren. I hate English. I do not even know Shakespeare and yet I am afraid of him. Viren is not. They are best friends. He has written Shakespeare’s name under the lid of his desk.

  Miss Moses dabs her neck with a white handkerchief. She does not like me. I asked her once why she sweats so much. Her reply was that she does not sweat, she perspires. There is a huge difference. Pigs sweat, ladies perspire.

  The fans in class do not work. The electricity has gone off today so Miss Moses is very wet. Three of the windowpanes are broken; it means extra air will enter. Even though the fans are not working, we are not allowed to open the rest of the windows. Miss Moses does not think it proper. Ladies do not open windows.

  “Viren,” says Miss Moses. She calls his name very clearly, as if he is a diamond or something. Viren stands up. He always stands up when teachers talk to him. The teachers love him for it. He is so respectful.

  “Yes, Miss Moses,” he answers in a soft voice.

  “I want you to take a bow.”

  Viren coyly lowers his head and smiles. The teachers love him for this. He is so humble.

  “Go ahead,” she says. “Your essay got the highest mark in the class.”

  Moses bows. Viren might as well be called Moses. He is so holy.

  “Thank you Miss Moses,” says Viren.

  If they do not stop soon, I will be sick. They should shine apples for each other.

  “There’s another essay that deserves special mention,” says Miss Moses.

  Good. Now there are two students who can shine apples for Miss Moses. She will need two apples. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. But if there are too many apples, one has to consider the cooks and the broth they spoil. I am quite intelligent. But no one in the class knows this. It truly upsets me that someone of my genius lies undetected. I look up at the fans. They are as still as men at funerals.

  “There’s another essay that stands out,” she says. “It’s only natural that this essay got the lowest mark because the person who wrote it is busy staring at fans.”

  Viren looks at me and laughs. The class also laughs. Miss Moses does not like laughter, but this time she will allow it because she dislikes me more than she dislikes laughter.

  “Can you tell us why you’re staring at the fan?” she asks me.

  “He wants to be a fan bearer,” says Viren.

  The class loves it. I let out a weak smile. Viren opens the lid of his desk and lowers his head so Miss Moses cannot see him.

  “You came last,” he says softly. “But it’s not your fault. You come from a long line of donkeys.”

  “Shakespeare is a donkey,” I reply.

  But it is weak, so weak. It is very hot, so hot that even the fans feel it. Miss Moses says something but I do not hear her. I look at Viren, at that thin neck of his, and wonder where he got the courage to be so bold. I must stay calm. I must wait till school is over.

  “You don’t even know who Shakespeare is,” whispers Viren.

  “I do,” I say.

  “You can’t even spell his
name.”

  “I can.”

  “Do it.”

  I look at the fans and they are still not working. I do not know where to look.

  “Fan bearer,” says Viren. “The answer will not come from heaven.”

  For once I wish it would. I am even willing to pray.

  “I knew it,” he says. “Your father is a donkey.”

  I rise out of my chair and bang the desk lid down on him. The class goes silent. Miss Moses yells. I look around at all their faces. I suddenly realize that I do not like any of them. They are just like family.

  And then I do it again. I hold Viren’s neck so he cannot move and bring the heavy lid down. Miss Moses gets up from her chair. There is a loud scream from Viren. It surprises me and I let go of his neck. He does not move his head. I try to get the desk lid off him but it will not move. It is stuck to his head. I jerk again until I see the blood. There is a nail in his eye. Our schools should have safer desks.

  I put the empty whiskey bottle back on the ground. The ants are enjoying the bhel. Soon they will eat my brown paper bag. Even though it is only early evening, the sky has suddenly darkened. It happens a lot in this city. The sky forgets that it is blue. It sees the dusty winding streets, the naked children, the withered dogs, the widows, the drug-selling temples and it turns sad. It takes away its own light in shame.

  “What happened?” asks the giant. “You don’t like whiskey?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Something from the past?”

  “Forget the past,” I say. “I want my future.”

  “Give me your hand.”

  I show him my right palm.

  “No,” he says. “Show me your left hand.”

  “But it’s not there.”

  “Just like your past.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your past does not exist. You don’t want it to.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I have lost my arm. I wish to forget that.”

  “Think back,” he says. “Before you lost the arm.”

  “I don’t want to,” I say.

  “Take it out,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Take out what’s in the bag.”

  “How do you know something is in the bag?”

  “You stopped traffic for it,” he says. “Must be worth a lot.”

  I lift the bag and wipe off the few ants that are on it. I remove the dark finger and place it in his palm. It does not surprise him at all. It is as if I have placed a ballpoint pen in his hand, or an incense stick, or a dark candle.

  “You are doing everything opposite,” he says. “See how you have placed it?”

  He turns the finger around in his palm until it points my way.

  “You must go there,” he says.

  “Where?”

  “Where the finger points. To your heart.”

  “My heart?”

  “Everything lies there.”

  I look at the finger and suddenly understand what he is saying. We circle around people and look at backs of heads, collars, buttons, sleeves, folds of trousers. But when finally the heart is revealed, we turn away and tie our shoelaces. From the very beginning, the finger was pointed at me.

  THE LOST ARM

  If the heart must speak, then the heart must travel backwards, two months, to a hospital bed.

  The ceiling fan moved very slowly so I could count how many blades it had. Three fat, rusty blades. It cut air clumsily and made a strange sound — wong wong wong — as it circled above me, as though it were mourning the death of a drowning victim in the Indo-China Sea. Perhaps hospital fans keep a record of each patient below them. So the person before me, on those cold sheets, must have been Chinese.

  I looked outside and it was night. The lights in the sky were not stars. They were the eyes of dead people shining, blinking, calling out, and hoping that I’d come to them soon. I was walking through the dark temper of trees, speaking the murmur of some other man’s heart. I was outgrowing the trees and grass, but growing downward, like wells, like people who are always sorry.

  I needed to sit up to get some clarity. I propped myself up on my elbows. A sick feeling invaded me.

  I had just one elbow.

  I lifted my right hand and reached across toward my left. I did this slowly. Then I drew my hand away. I was in no hurry to confirm anything. Parts of the walls shone as car headlights fell upon them and died.

  That was the first time I saw the flying cockroaches. Instead of closing my eyes, I wanted to let them in. They fluttered like brown butterflies, growing large, then small, and large again. They sat before me in a row on the bedpost, priests keeping guard, praying with the whirring of wings, driving something away. I looked up and the fan had stopped circling. I heard a dog barking as if he had spotted something. Then the dog grew quiet.

  All at once the cockroaches stopped praying. The bedpost rattled and the cockroaches shook, stripped of their priesthood. They turned into scared little children. Tiny holes appeared in the window, which were soon filled with black. Not the black of night, but a darker, more truthful black. The colour belonged to the black cockroaches. They tore at the brown ones, devoured them as if feasting on charred pieces of meat. One by one, the brown fell to the floor. When the last one fell, the black took their place on the bedpost.

  They willed my right arm to rise. Even though I did not want it to, my arm reached across to my left side and touched the surface of the bed. I felt the cold of a white bedsheet. I tried to pull my arm away but it kept going higher. The black ones bowed their heads. When I touched my stump, they flew out the tiny holes in the window into the clear night sky.

  I lay in bed knowing there had to have been a mistake. Only beggars and poor children lose their arms. There is not enough food in their bodies and the heart is unable to send blood everywhere. The limbs anticipate this and fall off on purpose. My arm must be under the bed, I reasoned. I tried to get up but my head stayed down. The orderly must have taken the arm to clean. Who had brought me here, and which hospital was I in? A dam had burst and the questions came like burning hot water.

  When the orderly arrived the next morning, I kept silent. He had the answers and I did not wish to hear them. So I let him turn me around and do his job. Was I in an animal hospital? Outside, rabbits played in the grass. Some lay sick on their backs, calling out for help; others put their soft heads together and prayed for the sick ones to be well again. The dog who had barked the night before circled outside my window. He kept looking at the sky. Sick rabbits crawled from under his legs and came out well. The orderly left and as the door closed, all the lights went out and I slept again.

  At some point, I remember telling the orderly that I was cold even though I was not. Even though they had turned the fan off, I kept asking for extra blankets. The orderly replied that I was already using two blankets. But I insisted I was cold. Only a shawl could keep me warm, I said. So he brought me a shawl. Cover my head, I said. So he covered my head with the shawl and I slept again. In truth, I wanted the shawl for when I left. They were mad if they thought I was going to walk out without a shawl that covered what I had lost.

  When I woke, the orderly was still there. Or perhaps he had just walked in. He stared at me and pity poured out of his eyes, enough to fill large vats. I asked him how I had lost my arm. He told me he had smoked twenty beedis the night I was brought to the hospital. I arrived when he went down to smoke his twenty-first, in the back of the hospital where the garbage is stored, where the orderlies meet to smoke during their breaks. He was the only one there. He could not remember if the moon was out. I told him I did not care much for the moon. Just as he had lit a match to light his twenty-first beedi, a Mahindra jeep had rushed toward him. He lit his beedi anyway. As he took his first dum, the vehicle stopped right in front of him. A door opened, a body fell out of the backseat, rolled onto the street and settled at the foot of a huge garbage container. That was you, he said. I thought so, I replied. Did I ha
ve my arm? He did not remember if he threw the beedi to the floor or if it just fell from his mouth, but I did have an arm. It could hardly be called an arm — the fingers crunched, the bones separated, it was an entangled mass of flesh, like the roots of a tree unwilling to let go of each other. I thanked him for the description. He said he had shouted for help and rushed me into intensive care. What about the police, I asked. What about them, he replied. It was the right answer.

  Over the next few days, or weeks — how can you tell time when you do not have a wrist for a watch? — I slept more than I was awake. I answered two questions over and over. Question: If I was the victim of a hit and run, why was I dropped off at the hospital? Answer: They must have sprouted a conscience after hitting me. Question: How did I know the orderly was telling the truth? Answer: There was no reason for him to lie.

  I finally spoke to the doctor, the one who had done the cutting. He offered me his condolences and confirmed the orderly’s story. He said I could see my arm if I wished to. The hospital did not keep the amputated limb itself, only a photograph of it. I would probably find it in a medical journal in the coming years, he said. I did not ask why. I told him I would very much like to see the photograph. He scooped it out of his pocket as if he was performing a magic trick for a dying child. Even in its mangled state, I recognized my arm. It had my burn mark.

  The burn had been self-inflicted at age ten, one night when Mother was underneath the judge. Hungry, I had walked from my bedroom into the kitchen. I had put the stove on, for that was all I knew how to do, and let some water boil. I meant to burn them both — they were screaming and shouting so much anyway. As I watched the water boil, I thought of Father, and I understood why he never smiled, why he kept cutting himself with the razor blade even though he had finished shaving. I got Father’s razor blade, dipped it in the boiling water and made a deep gash near the bicep of my left arm. Now Father and I shared the same sorrow. But unlike Father, I did not want to remind myself of Mother each day when I looked in the mirror. So I used my arm instead of my face. When Father came home, he dressed the wound. I told him I had no idea why I did it. He did not say much. Years later, the mark still remained in the shape of a crescent moon. I called it my burn mark because I was burning more than the water itself. But it was only in hospital that I realized its true worth. Without it, I would not have been able to identify my arm. Mother helped me without even knowing it.